Brilliant Band Manipulates Spotify to Fund Upcoming Tour

They recorded a silent album, and are having fans stream it on repeat.

A band called Vulfpeck has devised a brilliant plan to reap major royalties from Spotify so they can fund their upcoming tour, Noisey reports.

They’re calling it the Sleepify Tour. The band recorded a totally silent album, and then asked their fans to stream the album on repeat while they slept. It’s a win-win situation: nobody’s sleep gets disturbed by an endless cycle of noise, and the band gets the royalties (however small) for every time one of their “songs” is played.

Of course, Vulfpeck could have recorded a real album and asked fans to play that on repeat, but it sounds like the gimmick of the silent album is helping the band raise more money than they might have earned otherwise.

“I’m hoping Sleepify will chart on Spotify,” Vulfpeck frontman Jack Stratton told Noisey. “It’s also generated enough PR to kill a horse. The album has made five grand based on our popular tracks play count. We’ll know for sure in two months when they report sales.”

As for Spotify, there’s not much they can do about the situation — but at least they’re being good sports about it.

“[I]t’s a clever stunt but we prefer Vulfpeck’s earlier albums,” they told Noisey in an email. “Sleepify seems derivative of John Cage’s work[.]”